Direct dating of Neanderthal remains from the site of Vindija Cave and implications for the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition Thibaut Devièsea,1, Ivor Karavanicb,c, Daniel Comeskeya, Cara Kubiaka, Petra Korlevicd, Mateja Hajdinjakd, Siniša Radovice, Noemi Procopiof, Michael Buckleyf, Svante Pääbod, and Tom Highama aOxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom; bDepartment of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, HR-10000 Zagreb, Croatia; cDepartment of Anthropology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071; dDepartment of Evolutionary Genetics, Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany; eInstitute for Quaternary Palaeontology and Geology, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, HR-10000 Zagreb, Croatia; and fManchester Institute of Biotechnology, University of Manchester, Manchester M1 7DN, United Kingdom Edited by Richard G. Klein, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved July 28, 2017 (received for review June 5, 2017) Previous dating of the Vi-207 and Vi-208 Neanderthal remains from to directly dating the remains of late Neanderthals and early Vindija Cave (Croatia) led to the suggestion that Neanderthals modern humans, as well as artifacts recovered from the sites they survived there as recently as 28,000–29,000 B.P. Subsequent dating occupied. It has become clear that there have been major pro- yielded older dates, interpreted as ages of at least ∼32,500 B.P. We blems with dating reliability and accuracy across the Paleolithic have redated these same specimens using an approach based on the in general, with studies highlighting issues with underestimation extraction of the amino acid hydroxyproline, using preparative high- of the ages of different dated samples from previously analyzed performance liquid chromatography (Prep-HPLC). This method is sites (6). We have been working on redating some of the pur- more efficient in eliminating modern contamination in the bone col- ported late-surviving Neanderthal sites from around Europe, lagen. The revised dates are older than 40,000 B.P., suggesting the which have included human and archaeological remains from Vindija Neanderthals did not live more recently than others across sites such as Mezmaiskaya (Russia), where a previous directly Europe, and probably predate the arrival of anatomically modern dated Neanderthal infant yielded a radiocarbon age of ∼29,000 ANTHROPOLOGY humans in Eastern Europe. We applied zooarchaeology by mass B.P. (7), and Zafarraya (Spain), which was thought to contain spectrometry (ZooMS) to find additional hominin remains. We iden- Neanderthal remains clustering in age around a small group of tified one bone that is Neanderthal, based on its mitochondrial DNA, U-series–dated animal bones between 33,400 and 28,900 B.P. and dated it directly to 46,200 ± 1,500 B.P. We also attempted to (8). At Mezmaiskaya, the AMS dates obtained for the Nean- date six early Upper Paleolithic bone points from stratigraphic units derthal excavated above the previously dated individual were + ± G1,Fd/d G1 and Fd/d, Fd. One bone artifact gave a date of 29,500 substantially older (9). This, along with other AMS dates from 400 B.P., while the remainder yielded no collagen. We additionally cut-marked fauna from the same archaeological horizons, sug- GENETICS – dated animal bone samples from units G1 and G1 G3. These dates gested the original date of 29,000 B.P. could not be correct. At suggest a co-occurrence of early Upper Paleolithic osseous artifacts, Zafarraya, Wood et al. (10) showed that, when redated using particularly split-based points, alongside the remains of Neander- ultrafiltration methods, the bones that produced ages of ∼33,000 thals is a result of postdepositional mixing, rather than an associa- B.P. were in fact beyond the radiocarbon limit, suggesting the tion between the two groups, although more work is required to show this definitively. Significance Vindija Cave (Croatia) | single-compound AMS dating | Radiocarbon dating of Neanderthal remains recovered from DNA analysis | zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry | Vindija Cave (Croatia) initially revealed surprisingly recent re- Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition sults: 28,000–29,000 B.P. This implied the remains could repre- sent a late-surviving, refugial Neanderthal population and ∼ he period between 45,000 and 35,000 cal B.P. in Europe suggested they could have been responsible for producing Twitnessed the so-called biocultural transition from the Mid- some of the early Upper Paleolithic artefacts more usually produced dle to early Upper Paleolithic, when incoming anatomically by anatomically modern humans. This article presents revised ra- modern humans displaced Neanderthal groups across the con- diocarbon dates of the human bones from this site obtained using tinent (1, 2). Significant questions still remain regarding the a more robust purification method targeting the amino acid precise nature of this transition, the humans responsible for the hydroxyproline. The data show that all the Neanderthal remains various transitional early Upper Paleolithic industries, the de- are from a much earlier period (>40,000 cal B.P.). These revised gree of overlap between Neanderthals and modern humans, and dates change our interpretation of this important site and dem- the timing of the disappearance of the former. The European onstrate that the Vindija Neanderthals probably did not overlap record for the transition retains its interest because it is the best- temporally with early modern humans. documented sequence for the disappearance of a hominin group available (3). The latest data, both radiometric and genetic, Author contributions: T.D., S.P., and T.H. designed research; T.D., I.K., D.C., C.K., P.K., M.H., S.R., N.P., M.B., S.P., and T.H. performed research; T.D., D.C., and T.H. contributed suggest Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted or over- new reagents/analytic tools; T.D., I.K., D.C., C.K., P.K., M.H., S.R., N.P., M.B., S.P., and T.H. lapped for up to several thousand years in Europe until Neander- analyzed data; T.D. and T.H. wrote the paper; and I.K., D.C., C.K., P.K., M.H., S.R., N.P., thal disappearance at around 40,000 cal B.P. (4, 5). Ascertaining the M.B., and S.P. contributed to writing the paper. spatial attributes of Neanderthal and modern human populations The authors declare no conflict of interest. in Europe is an area of active research, and a reliable chronology This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. remains essential. Freely available online through the PNAS open access option. Our understanding of the biocultural processes involved in the 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: [email protected]. transition have been greatly influenced by improved accelerator This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10. mass spectrometry (AMS) dating methods and their application 1073/pnas.1709235114/-/DCSupplemental. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1709235114 PNAS Early Edition | 1of6 Downloaded by guest on September 27, 2021 Neanderthal remains were unlikely to be as young as previously Svoboda (18)]. Karavanic and Smith (19) have suggested that the thought. In both cases, revised radiocarbon dates produced with mixture of elements may represent the interaction and possible more robust chemical pretreatment methods have illustrated sig- acculturation between modern humans and late Neanderthals. nificant underestimates in the previous dates that cannot be rec- These alternatives are testable by selecting human and organic onciled with a hypothesis of late-surviving refugial Neanderthals. osseous points, as well as animal bones, for renewed AMS dating. The Neanderthal fossil remains from level G1 of Vindija Cave This is what we have undertaken and describe here. in northern Croatia have remained in the literature as potentially late individuals. Given the evidence from the Pes¸tera cu Oase Materials specimen, which demonstrates a recent Neanderthal ancestry in A total of 10 samples from Vindija Cave were selected for AMS radiocarbon a 40,000 cal B.P. modern human from the Danube corridor (5), dating (Table 1). These included three previously dated Neanderthal specimens the renewed dating of the Vindija remains is overdue. (Vi-207, Vi-208, and Vi-33.19), as well as a fourth Neanderthal bone (Vi-*28) Two specimens, Vi-207 and Vi-208, were originally directly discovered using zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) screening. In AMS dated in the late 1990s at the Oxford Radiocarbon Ac- addition, to test the reality of the co-occurrence of earlier Upper Paleolithic bone and antler point artifacts with the Neanderthal remains, we selected six celerator Unit (ORAU). Vi-207 is a right posterior mandible and osseous points for dating (SI Appendix,Fig.S1). To test collagen preservation, Vi-208 is a parietal fragment, both showing Neanderthal-specific we took ∼3–5 mg bone powder, using tungsten carbide drills, and measured morphology (11, 12). The initial radiocarbon results were the %N content. This is an indicator of collagen preservation (20). The results 29,080 ± 400 B.P. (OxA-8296) and 28,020 ± 360 B.P. (OxA- show that only one bone point sample (Vi-3446) had sufficient levels of ni- 8295) (13). Higham et al. (14) attempted to redate these speci- trogen to warrant full sampling for collagen extraction and AMS dating; the mens by taking the very small amounts of collagen remaining remainder failed and therefore were not sampled further (SI Appendix,Table from the original sample pretreatment and ultrafiltering the S1). We also included the sample from a split-based bone point (Vi-3437) that product before AMS dating. The revised measurements were had been analyzed in the laboratory previously, producing only a small collagen 32,400 ± 1,800 B.P.